A picky family goes house hunting in this brief but intensely silly outing.
Papa and Mama Moogee, rendered in the cartoon illustrations as four-legged, egg-shaped, yellow creatures with oversized, spiral schnozzes, drive real estate agent Mr. Ruru (also a Moogee) in their wiener-shaped Moogeemobile from one prospective new house to the next. The first is “a great big blue house with large windows, eight chimneys, and a yukie-yukie tree loaded with yukie-yukie berries,” but Mama Moogee doesn’t like blue. Ugly statues adorn the second offering, and the next house looks exactly like a big wedge of cheese. At each rejection, the three young Moogees scream a page- (ultimately spread-) filling, child-audience–friendly chorus of “WAA WAA MOOGEE DOOGEE WEE WEE LOW LUM!” until the last house—round and pink and perfect in every way—earns a nod and Mr. Ruru’s understanding that the nonsense means “We’ll be happy anywhere / as long as we’ve got our family there!”
Not so much bibliotherapy for families on the move as a quick burst of verbal foolery, tailor-made for reading aloud. (Picture book. 4-6)
